Murphy mixes the organic and the synthetic, rock and electro, loud guitars and louder beats. Like any good dance producer, he excels at the art of tension and release.

Despite its scattershot title and the fact that it was recorded in five separate studios across Nashville and California, Strays feels like Price’s most cohesive collection yet guided by light West Coast shadings courtesy of Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Dawes). Price finds ways to effectively and subtly tease out different shades from her longtime versatile band, the Price Tags.

On his fifth album, Dawn FM, the Weeknd focuses those interstellar ambitions to anoint us with the most enchanting music to the portal through purgatory.

It ["I Can See You"] and "When Emma Falls In Love," a glittery ballad about an alluring older-sister figure, are perhaps the best summations of the Taylor's Version project, bridging the years between Swift's youth and her present with the sort of tenderness that comes from paging through dog-eared scrapbooks and dusty photo albums.

This one will make heads from Shaolin to San Diego happy.

The first few tunes are instant, and all stay with you.

Hearing twenty-one Lynch-penned songs back to back gets exhausting.

Too young to have experienced the era he holds so dear, Pecknold has found refuge and inspiration in the echoes.

That light Grande promised has helped lead her down the path toward her best album yet, and one of 2018’s strongest pop releases to date.

On Subtract, Sheeran’s lyricism returns to the spotlight, bolstered by finely detailed music that complements his crystalline lyrics and close-confidant delivery.

By letting Dr. Dre take over the low-end-funk production, and rhyming about things he actually cares about, he comes up with a more painful, honest and vital record than anyone could have expected at this late date, up there with "The Eminem Show" or maybe even better.

With Being Funny In A Foreign Language, they reassert themselves at the forefront of 2020s pop-rock, fusing together the textures and musical ideas of soft-rock hits from three decades ago with modern sensibilities in a way that sounds instantly familiar, yet distinctively of-the-moment.

Maturity suits these guys: Five albums into their career, it sounds like they're just getting warmed up.

So his return to political-minded material on Harps and Angels is reason to wrap yourself in the flag and cheer.

It’s a surprise to have these Swedes back in the game. But it’s a bigger, sweeter surprise that they returned so full of musical vitality.

Femme Fatale may be Britney's best album; certainly it's her strangest. Conceptually it's straightforward: a party record packed with sex and sadness.

Maybe because Meloy is now a published author (he's penned a trilogy of popular children's books), his songwriting wit seems to have grown sharper and less showoff-y.

Dirt Femme isn’t Tove Lo’s magnum opus but in revealing a more vulnerable side and digging deeper into her ethos, she excels at not losing what has made her such a standout in a saturated genre over the years.

Orton delivers some gooey pop complete with sticky tunes and honey-dipped ear candy - yet it's heavy, disturbing, recondite.

What sets them apart are Morris' understated wit... and the clear enthusiasm of her bandmates, who hurtle through every jangly chord change like they're falling into a new romance.

Revolution Radio isn't just hot nostalgia. It reflects decades of accrued emotional and musical wisdom.

Young may feel like the last hippie standing, but he still sounds like a guy who believes the dreaming is not done.

1990s are a Scottish indie trio who pursue their ridiculous CBGB punk fantasies with almost religious devotion, resulting in some of the most hilariously brilliant singles of the past year.

The most uncanny, and most impressive, thing about the record might be that the pair sound even more focused, and more comfortable in their unforced eccentricity, than they did on Superwolf. There’s really no one else out there making songs like this; let’s hope we don’t have to wait another 16 years for more.

Even when she wrestles with Pharrell's abrupt stylistic changes or lets herself get absorbed in a Timberlake melody, Madonna still finds her way back on top.

Clark is good at bending country boilerplate.

Rosalía’s new album, El Mal Querer, is less rigorous than its predecessor, though even easier to like. ... It’s also extremely effective.

Hackney Diamonds isn’t just another new Stones album, but a vibrant and cohesive record — the first Stones album in ages you’ll want to crank more than once before filing away.

What that hodgepodge adds up to is the year's best hip-hop debut.

Like The Social Experiment project, as well as her last record, Legacy! Legacy! is about community, about legacies as heritage but also as that which is forged on the ground in the moment. Woods is a teacher and organizer, so it’s not surprising she encourages her guests to shine.

The collection’s treasure trove of five discs contains raw demos, radio sessions, a rare live concert, and alternative mixes that show how Bowie was desperate to figure out his next step. ... The songs that didn’t make it to Hunky Dory studio versions are even more revealing. Each shows Bowie was woodshedding new characters. ... The rest of the demos show how Bowie developed his sound and stuck to his vision when he got into the studio.

"Somewhere in a burst of glory/Sound becomes a song/I'm bound to tell a story/That's where I belong," Simon sings on the new album's opening track, and the comfort and command he displays throughout You're the One demonstrate that he's right.

The first thing that hits you about the songs is their intelligent design, from the metallic-Cars echo of "Bombs Below" to the son-of-Nirvana charge in "On All Fours." But without the hell-bent revolutionary zeal, Ahead of the Lions would sound like empty victory.

His finest batch of songs since This Is Hardcore.

Among the album’s most ferocious songs is “Thirty Dozen Roses,” a hairshirt thrasher about being a “lousy prick” which steamrolls over questionable puns with a Hüsker-ish hardcore attack. The most delightful might be “Send Me A Postcard,” the album’s sole cover. ... It’s totally awesome, tortured and joyous in perfect balance, and it does what Mould’s music has always done, even at its bleakest--exorcising demons through rock noise.

In tracing the way Mitchell’s songs mutated from bare-boned recordings to fully realized tracks with more musicians than she’d ever used before, Archives Volume 3 finally allows us to hear those steps along the way. That evolution is most apparent in the making of Court and Spark, an album that was both a beautifully crafted piece of adult pop on par with Steely Dan‘s work and a warm, intimate, emotionally conflicted meditation on love and relationships.

Radically openhearted and stunning new album. The album feels like a series of warm embraces: of Andrews’ past musical selves, of her past mistakes and misfortunes, and of her bright, beautifully uncertain present and future.

I’ll Be Your Mirror reaffirms the weight of the Velvets’ importance, which countless artists reflect every day, whether they acknowledge it or not.

On just seven songs that run a little over an hour, Deafheaven have finally achieved what they’ve been striving towards for the better part of a decade: true post-metal fusion.

If you think you want it, you do. [9 Dec 2004, p.184]

Ultimately, Divers, is about things lost with age and progress--wisdom, beauty, innocence, love, mystery. Yet this music always seems to look ahead.... Questlove, Kanye, Kendrick and all other curators of hyper-literate avant-pop: Ball's in your court.

Whatever informed it, this may be the most heart-rending music she's ever made.

The happiest-sounding album she's ever made.... it may also be the best. While her austere sonic signature remains, the vocals are discernibly more relaxed, the tunes welcoming and even expansive.

This is a cratedigger mixtape to rock virtually any party, and spur digging of your own.

The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.

It's as inviting, immaculately produced, jokey and unsettled a record as any he has ever made.

Despite Poses' multiple producers, there are more clean, clever ideas of arrangement here than on Wainwright's cluttered debut.

They actually took the time to make a totally crunk geek-punk record, buzzing through ten excellent tunes in less than half an hour with zero filler and enough psychosexual contortions to buy Cuomo's shrink another hot tub.

If you want a vision of the future of hip-hop and techno, get this record.

The Beatles are enjoying the speed and lunacy of stardom here.

Nine songs, 32 minutes, no false moves.

The organic, delightfully earnest tracks blend Miss Colombia‘s avant-Latin sonic palette with revered cross-generational traditions, forging a new world of musical borderlessness that Pimienta is glad to call home.

This set of 33 songs, 11 of which never aired, revisits both [MTV Unplugged] sessions, boiling their magical greatness down to two base elements: achingly sugared melodies and Michael Stipe's potent voice, in all its deep grain, swooning vibrato and radiant empathy.

The record’s tight 57 minutes feel as cohesive a project as any artist has released in the streaming era. Yachty’s genuine adoration of his musical inspirations is like the Gen Z alchemy of Pinkpantheress, able to turn familiar source material into something entirely new.

Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart is an example of strength and conviction—as well as friendship.

June has never sounded more fully and thrillingly herself than she does on her latest album, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, which merges pop ambition, folksy open-heartedness and blues wisdom.

That Lucky Old Sun lacks the magnificent shock of SMiLE, Wilson's 2004 completion of that '67 album. But it has a natural, hopeful flow that leaves you warm all over.

Well, the end of all things must've been pretty bitchin', because the follow-up is pure heaven.

Full of muscled, vintage R&B grooves, fevered soloing, psychedelic arrangements and oracular mumbo jumbo, it's the wildest record Rebennack has made in many years.

Egypt Station flows as a unit, structured like a long ride on a cosmic train, beginning and ending with ambient railway-station noise.

Solange’s growth as an artist has been one of music’s most fascinating stories, and, like A Seat at the Table, When I Get Home serves as a thrilling reminder that this is just the beginning of the futures she still has yet to unpack. If she can make a party-friendly album so meaningful, we’ve barely even witnessed the tip of her vision.

The 20/20 Experience is both a return to form and a departure, deftly combining his trademark shape-shifting digital funk with a warmer, more organic sound.

With age/sex/location, Lennox has delivered her best work to date, one that mostly leaps past her patchy but inspired Shea Butter Baby debut in quality.

The rugged guitar tunes resemble a cow-punk update of the Clash, and Earle's song-to-song perspective shifts dazzle. [2 Sep 2004, p.142]

Guided by Syd’s laudable ear and angelic voice, Broken Hearts Club succeeds in sewing a narrative of love grown and wilted.

A beautifully wrought pop record that grapples with the disquiet hanging over the globe.

Snow Angel allows Rapp to channel her larger-than-life emotions into twisty pop songs that take big swings while being keenly aware of the human at their core.

For all Beck lifts from the Seventies, the album never sounds like a period piece; there's always something extra in the mix, stray elements that are both goofy and strangely apropos.

Again, the songs feel like unearthed classics.

The Big Doe Rehab isn't as distinct as last year's Fishscale, but it's close. Ghost's bouncy, more direct approach on cuts like 'Walk Around' shows off his ability to turn crack-slinging narratives into big, hooky pleasures.

The title suite on this two-CD set is the Tree's finest hour: a mounting drama of memoir and real-news trauma, animated with slicing guitars, ghost-song electronics, mile-high harmonies and smart pop bait.

It is the sound of apocalypse now.

West is the producer Common has been waiting for all of his career: He makes Common both catchier and edgier at the same time.

The New York boy/girl duo specialize in lovesick fuzz-pop on their fantastic debut album Swear I'm Good At This.

The sequel to 1998's Live on Two Legs, this 18-track compilation is perfect for anyone unwilling to wade into the sea of official Pearl Jam bootlegs.

The results can often recall Seventies Eno at his most meditative and Village Green-era Ray Davies at his most world-sick more than Gorillaz's bounce or Blur's guitar buzz.

The second disc’s first take of “Summertime” captures a brilliant performance that would have been a thing of legend if the band hadn’t fallen apart at the end. Other standouts include the foot-stomping “How Many Times Blues Jam,” an extended, wailing take on “I Need a Man to Love” and a charging, soulful take of “Combination of the Two.”

[A] quietly gripping, deceptively gleaming record.

Inside Out is the kind of recording God created Nashville for.

Apple's strongest and most detailed batch of songs yet.

Modest masterpiece of an album.

A showcase for inventiveness and versatility.

uknowhatimsayin¿ succeeds as a kind of high-wire act that balances Brown’s folk hero status against his documentarian sensibilities, tragedy against comedy, bluster against self-mockery. It’s shorter than his previous albums, and also lean in a way that few other rappers could replicate. Five albums in, he remains a singular talent who only needs a few short words to tell a good story.

Like the work of another artist who recently envisioned a velvet Elvis, it’s songwriting that doesn’t pander to mainstream country, alt-country, so-called Americana, indie-folk, or what-have you. It just tells its story, indelibly.

For a teenager's debut, Jake Bugg shows an artist who is crazy fully formed, stepping into a journey that should be worth following.

Her eighth album is a healthy mix of hit-chasing, theatrics and soon-to-be classic power ballads that emphasize her immense skills over half-baked conceptual themes.

At every turn -- high-mountain balladry, brassy R&B, near-metallic blues rock -- Rosanne sings of coming through loss with a poise and confessional will that are utterly country and absolutely in the family tradition.

It sure doesn't sound like a band that's hanging it up, because all four are on a roll musically, chasing the rock vibe of Midnight Memories and Four.

Hot Chip have always made songs that slip between the erotic and and neurotic, but this time out there’s another level, as the tracks slip sideways to comment on our upside down world. From the gospel preaching about peace on the opener, “Melody of Love,” to the dark images of dancing in circles “like we’re dead” in the closer, “No God,” these songs combine difficult thoughts and easy pleasures. Complicated music for strange days and nights.

There are few happy endings here, but the wounded have plenty of room to roam and waltz.

Le Bon is one of indie music's more beguilingly brilliant artists, as her sixth LP attests. [Feb 2022, p.72]

Their weirdest music yet. [24 Aug 2006, p.89]

Deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic, 1989 sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she's ever tried before. And yes, she takes it to extremes.

While it may not have as many grandiose showpieces as its older sibling – no nine-minute “Venice Bitch” to be found here – Chemtrails is every bit as sharp and prescient of a cultural artifact from pop’s premier Cassandra.

In the face of hysterical expectation, the Strokes have resisted the temptation to hit the brakes, grow up and screw around with a sound that doesn't need fixing -- yet.

Given one last chance to make an impact, Jay-Z has come up with one of the better albums of his career, though perhaps a shade lesser than his very best, Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint.

All three subsets [songs about fatherhood, girls and the audience] contain songs that are profoundly odd and reliably catchy.

This lavish multidisc set is as eccentric and compelling as its subject.